


Reconnaissance

by mumblefox



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 23:09:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9350345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblefox/pseuds/mumblefox
Summary: They'd gotten Sendak off the castle, and everyone should feel safe again. Thing was, they didn't. But they had time, now, to fix what they could, and Pidge had a plan that would help.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Happy 4 days to season two, friends!

 

Breakfast in the castle of Lions was, typically, a disjointed affair. Unless it was a training day - when their schedule was a little more structured - Keith would wander in early to find that Shiro was invariably there first, already fed and armoured and ready to go. Hunk was usually next, less a morning person than a creature of habit. Lance always showed up, but in a way that could only be described as ‘eventually’. But Pidge -

When or if Pidge would appear was anyone’s guess. She kept her own strange schedule, distorted by whatever she was working on, and even if she did put in an appearance, she was always cranky, distracted. Irritated that her body had needs that could pull her from her work.

Which is why it was a surprise when she plunked her butt down next to Keith as he was eating his breakfast, in her armour, helmet under her arm.

He side-eyed her and kept eating. Most everyone else added to their goo to make it more palatable, especially in the morning, but Keith didn’t bother. It was just food. If it would keep him alive for another day, he ate it.

Pidge was far more alert than he was, perched on the edge of her seat, vibrating with excitement. She leaned in towards him, voice low and conspiratorial. “Hey, Keith. You wanna go for an adventure?”

He glanced across to where Shiro was studying a blueprint of some kind. “Why are you whispering,” he said at a normal volume, and Pidge rolled her eyes and hooked a finger over the edge of his bowl, pulling it towards her. He put his spoon back into it so she could take a bite, which she did without flinching from the taste. Her relationship with food was as casual as his.

“I found something,” she said, “or I think I did. We’ve gotta go do some recon, first. Build out our knowledge base.”

“Is it important?”

Pidge nodded, and Keith took his bowl back.

“Why me?”

“If you’re gonna keep being churlish, I’ll ask Lance instead.” She left the bowl where it was, but took the full spoon out of his hand, and he let her.

“Will this help us get the castle running properly again, or in general?”

She blinked innocently behind her glasses. “Oh, sure. Long-term, I don’t see why not both.”

“Whatever.” He pushed his bowl back towards her and stood up. “I’ll meet you in the hangar.”

She shot finger-guns at him, _pcheww_ , _pcheww_ , and he rolled his eyes, waving to Shiro’s raised eyebrow in an I-don’t-know-don’t-worry-about-it gesture. He would let Pidge explain where they were going, and why, and why they weren’t bringing anyone else.

The castle turning on them had messed everybody up a little. But they had time, now: time to recover, to set things back to order. To make it right, as much as they could. To stop the shaking. It made sense that everyone would be working their way through it, and that they’d all be doing it in different ways. If Keith could help them do that, well - he’d do a lot more for them for a lot less.

 

* * *

 

“It’s a databank, I think,” Pidge said later, as they flew Green in stealth mode across the surface of a moon. Or planet. Didn’t matter. “A cache of some kind. Locked down, obviously, and pretty heavily guarded. We’re not gonna smash and grab; I can get in and out, and I just need you to watch my back.”

“Sure,” said Keith. It didn’t answer the question of what, exactly, she wanted to find in there. Information on Sendak’s crystal, or on her family, or on how much the Galra knew about the castle, maybe. That didn’t really matter, either. She said they needed it, and he trusted her judgement.

Allura and Shiro knew where they were; they would warp in backup if they needed it, but this was a small installation, and remote. Pidge had done her homework on this place. She and Keith sat invisibly above the base, checking that her information on the guard rotation was correct, which it was, down to the second. She pointed out their point of entry, showed Keith the route she’d planned. It involved more than a little bit of sneaking. At one point, she’d planned for him to boost her into a ceiling vent because she couldn’t risk the noise of her bayard.

She showed him escape routes, dead-ends, wrong turns, just in case something went wrong. She’d planned for failure, too, at every juncture.

It was a complex series of if-then arrangements that Keith lost track of almost immediately. He was a brawler; Pidge was a chessmaster. But that was why she wanted him along. If something went wrong, he could get them out.

So could Shiro, he almost said, but of everyone who’d been shaken up by the castle, Shiro had had the worst time of it. That was Keith’s fault - he’d left Shiro in the care of everyone else, not thinking he’d needed to specify that Shiro couldn’t be left alone with Sendak. He should have made sure, should have checked in, should have realized sooner, but he hadn’t.

His fault. He would do better, going forward. But for now, Shiro was shaken and unreliable.

Pidge had known that, had chosen to protect Shiro by not asking him to help her, even though he usually would have been the better choice. Moves and countermoves, if-then. Keith had never been able to see very far ahead like that, but he was glad Pidge could, and that she was on their team.

They landed Green nearby, settled her gingerly to the ground, and slipped out the open hatch. Keith turned just in time to see it close behind them, a window of the inside of her mouth that slid into invisibility as he watched. A curtain the exact colour of the world being pulled down.

He and Pidge slipped easily through their first challenge, a lock that her bayard sliced cleanly through, then soldered back together behind them. The only trace of their passage was a bumped line of metallic scar tissue you had to inspect to notice. They crowded up close to a door, and Keith kept an eye out as Pidge pulled a wire from her suit, plugged it into the locking mechanism, and started working.

“We could have just taken out a guard and stolen their hand again,” he said.

Pidge didn’t even glance up from her work. “Keith, I thought I made your role in this mission pretty darn clear.”

“It would work,” he said stubbornly.

“Yeah, but it’s only going to work for so long, and this is quieter. Just...stand there and make sure I don’t get shot in the back, man. You have one job.”

He nodded to himself, satisfied. The door clicked, almost inaudibly, and they slipped inside and palmed the door shut behind them.

That was when the first of Pidge’s carefully laid plans went a little awry.

They’d busted into the detention block, because it was the smallest part of an already small and remote location, and should have been totally empty and, therefore, unguarded.

It was, emphatically, not. On both counts.

There was a single Galra soldier inside, who turned curiously at the sound of the door opening, and Pidge lunged forward and jammed her bayard into its ribs before it had a chance to do anything else. The soldier jerked and spasmed as her taser fried its systems, and then it slid ungracefully to the floor.

“Nice reaction,” Keith said, but Pidge didn’t answer. She was staring at the creature in the holding cell.

It had taken him a moment to even register that it was a creature. He’d never seen an animal that large, not in person. It barely fit in the cell; all four of its legs were folded under it out of necessity, and its great antlered head was bowed. Some of the prongs had been chopped off, or snapped, so that it would fit through the door.

Anger flared, quick and bright, in Keith’s chest.

“I’m getting them out,” said Pidge, voice tight with some repressed emotion.

 _Good_ , thought Keith, and then: _them_? He moved closer to the cell as Pidge started working on the lock. There was the great, antlered, deer-elk-horse-thing. And there, clinging to its neck, was a small creature that looked more like a monkey than anything else, long-armed and long-fingered, with thick, silky, white-gold fur that covered everything except for its button-nosed face. It was the colour of a perfectly toasted marshmallow.

The horse thing didn’t react to his approach, but the monkey thing’s head swiveled slowly to him, and it blinked its great eyes at him. It looked tired.

“Hey, you’re gonna be okay,” said Keith. “We’re from the Voltron Alliance, and we’re gonna get you out of here.”

“Our thanks-no to you, stranger,” said the horse in a voice that rumbled, even through the muffling material of the cell walls. “We-no are in your debt-no.”

Keith knocked on his helmet, thinking the translation tech was screwy. “How did you end up in here?”

He was still making eye contact with the monkey, but it was still the horse that spoke. Keith was finding this arrangement a little disorienting. “We need-no the information-no that is kept here. We must find-no an ancient artifact-no that will save our people, and the Galra know where it is.”

“What sort of artifact?” said Pidge from her position by the control station. Her frown indicated that the system was being uncooperative.

The horse-deer knocked its antlers against the wall, a gesture of impatience, or just a threat. “The sort that will save lives.” It shifted, painfully, on its folded legs. If they’d been in there a while, they were probably cramped something terrible.

Pidge hummed, unperturbed. “Well, as long as it’s not a weapon of some kind, we can point you in the right direction. We’re here to mine their data, too.”

The sloth-monkey on the horse’s back uncurled a finger and held it up. “Weather,” it said slowly.

“Nice,” said Pidge. “Oh - double nice. Got it.” The door clicked, swung open. The deer creature immediately angled its antlers out, then unfolded the rest of its enormous body from the cell with aching caution. The sloth-monkey stayed in its place on its neck, making a sound that was almost like a purr, just a low hum of encouragement.

As they emerged, Keith realized that the sloth-monkey wasn’t small at all. It seemed small, hunkered there on the back of this massive animal’s neck, but it was almost as big as Keith was. Its arms were probably longer than he was tall. The not-horse was so large Keith could have walked underneath it with only mild slouching.

“I’m Pidge,” she said, coming forward to stand with them, “and that’s Keith. We’ve gotta get going before the next guard rotation, but if you tell us what you’re looking for, we’ll try to pull your info from the archive while we’re in there.”

“It has many names,” rumbled the horse, stretching its legs, mindful of its antlers. Up close, Keith could see they were carved, delicately, with fine filigree spirals of varying widths. Something like gold shone in the deepest of the carvings. “We think it will be about the size-no of an Asperion’s head-no, and be marked-no with the ancient symbols-no.”

“Why do you talk like that?” Keith said, at the same time Pidge said, “What do these symbols look like?”

They glanced at each other, and Keith waved a hand, _proceed_. “Your question is more important,” he said.

“Not to mention less rude,” Pidge said, and Keith shrugged.

But the aliens seemed unperturbed. “Roion will show you the symbols-no,” said the not-horse. The sloth-monkey’s arms unfolded, reached slowly out to place a hand on an outer antler, and the horse thing let its great head be guided as the monkey - the Asperion - used the antler to scratch shapes into the cell wall. “And we speak-no this way so the Asperion can understand-no better,” it said. “They hear very slowly.”

“Ohhhh, I get it,” said Pidge. She was copying the symbols into her suit’s internal storage as the Asperion carved them out. She was also making an effort to speak quite slowly. “You use that extra sound to draw their attention to the key parts of your sentence. Smart.”

“We have to get moving, Pidge,” said Keith, and she shushed him.

“Can you give us anything else to go on? A system, a time frame? A clearer sense of what it does besides, uh...weather?”

The horse shook its head regretfully, and the Asperion chirped at it in irritation as the antler was yanked out of its hand with the motion. “It is an old artifact-no from an old legend-no. There is a chance it does not even exist-no,” it said. “But it can save-no the Asperion and the Ka’alia both, so we must try.”

“I mean, quiznak,” said Pidge, scratching her head. “Hunk and I could probably build you something that would help, if it’s that dire.”

“Pidge, focus,” Keith said.

The Asperion released the Ka’alia’s head, satisfied with its work. Slowly, it tucked its long arms back against its body, but it took the time to pass a sorrowful finger across the stump end of one lopped-off antler first.

Pidge pointed to the damage. “Did the Galra do that to you?”

“When they captured us,” the Ka’alia said softly. “It doesn’t hurt much. They will grow back.”

Maybe it was because they were the only two humans in the galaxy right now, but Keith could feel Pidge, beside him, vibrating with indignation. Maybe it was because he was feeling the same. The Galra couldn’t have known it wouldn’t hurt, couldn’t have known they weren’t causing permanent damage. And they’d done it anyway. It was mutilation, pure and simple. It was cruelty.

Pidge glanced up at him, and Keith nodded, not even sure what the question had been. But they were alike in some ways, he and Pidge, and he knew that look had meant violence, one way or another. This was revenge he’d gladly take.

“Well, then,” Pidge said, suddenly businesslike. She pointed to the door they’d entered through, then to a second, leading into the facility. “I locked that outer one behind us. You’re big enough that you can probably barricade the other until we get back, right?”

The Ka’alia nodded, antlers scraping the ceiling.

“Good. You’ll be safe in here, so stay put, okay? We’ll be back as soon as we can. Keith, you feel like knocking some heads?”

“Sure, if you’re okay with giving up on sneaking.”

“Five minutes ago, I wasn’t,” said Pidge, “but that was before I got _really irritated_.”

The Ka’alia nudged its great nose against Keith’s shoulder, which was sort of like being nudged by a bus. “You will have to hurry-no. They were sending a transport-no to collect us; we don’t know how long it will be until it arrives-no.”

Now this was getting interesting. Keith pulled his bayard, activated the sword. The thrum of the energy in his hand raced straight to his blood, to his heart, to his head. “How many guards did you say were here?”

“Enough,” Pidge said.

“Good,” Keith said, and he kicked the door open and lunged out with Pidge on his heels.

The first hallway was, unfortunately, sparsely populated. Keith loped down it like a hunting dog, alert and twitchy.

“Take a left,” Pidge said, and Keith swerved.

Ahead of them, two soldiers marched down the hallway, and Keith charged, snarling. They turned at the sound of his footsteps pounding towards them, but by then it was almost too late. Keith leapt, planted his sword in the chest of the first one, then rolled off and seized its weapon from its dying hands in one ceaseless motion, smooth as a river. He fired on the second, nearly point-blank. Then fired again, for good measure.

He was already moving again by the time Pidge caught up, leaping the wreckage. “Straight ahead twice,” she called after him, “then a right. That’s the room the databank is in. Let’s punch straight in.”

“Got it,” he said, leaning to peer around a corner before passing straight by.

Pidge followed.

Three guards down in total. Her outside estimate for hostiles was twelve in the entire facility.

25% clear, if the Ka’alia’s transport didn’t show in the next twenty minutes. The captive aliens being here was an eventuality she hadn’t planned for, but should have. A rookie mistake.

Ahead of her, Keith peeked around the second corner, then darted down it. There was a smashing sound, a mechanical whine, a single, piercing blaster fire that passed directly in front of Pidge’s face as she came around the corner. Keith was tangling with two more sentries - one of which had been parted from its legs - and he clearly had the situation under control.

Pidge whistled an alert to him, a heads-up-I-am-not-coming-to-help-you, then moved along. She took the next right at a run, knowing there would be sentries, and there they were: four tall white robots standing guard at the end of the hall. They fired as she rounded the corner, but she was already sliding under their fire, pushed by her jetpack. She’d fired as well, the moment she saw them, clipping her bayard to the wall so that it trailed a dangerous green line. She popped to her feet and then up again as she neared them, feet hitting one wall and pushing her in a loop around all four of them. Their blasters fired, but she was too quick, and she pulled the line tight with all the added force her jetpack could give her. Their chest cavities crumpled and sparked, and she activated her bayard to fry all four of them at once.

By the time Keith caught up, she was plugged into the security panel, cracking her way in. He came to stand beside her, and a Galra arm palmed the scanner, and the door slid open. Pidge turned a glare on Keith, who dropped the forearm to the floor.

“Told you it would work,” he said.

“You...just, just -” She flapped her hands at him, shuffling him into the room. “Do your one job, Keith.”

“You did half my job,” he said, and Pidge flushed, proud despite herself.

She started plugging into the databank. “There’s a possibility of three more wandering around. And don’t forget about the transport.”

“I’m not gonna forget about the transport. You do your job, and let me do mine.”

“Then get better at it,” Pidge quipped, but she was already halfway sunk into her work. There was a lot of stuff in here, and the Galra didn’t categorize things the same way she did. She pulled up a program from her suit, tied its search algorithm to the databank and let it calibrate. Then she started to dig.

Keith watched the skies through the single tiny window and let her work.

He kept quiet, and the only noise in the room was the soft _whirr_ of the computer banks, of Pidge’s tapping, and sighing, and frustrated groans. Keith’s Paladin armour was heavy on his shoulders. He wondered if the Ka’alia had been lying about its antlers not hurting. It was a thought he couldn’t afford to dwell on. He had a job to do; he waited, quietly, and watched the skies.

No sign of approaching craft, and no sign of someone having raised the alarm.

This had been altogether too easy.

“I’ve got their thing,” Pidge muttered. “Or at least I think I do. They were dead-on about the symbols.”

“Can you hurry it up? This is taking a long time.”

“Zip the attitude or I’m leaving you here,” she said absently, scrolling through lines of code that reflected in her glasses.

A dull roar began to grow in the silence of the room. When Keith looked back out the window, there was a transport descending through the atmosphere. And it had company.

Someone had passed along the message that their captive was a big one, and the Galra had sent a correspondingly large shuttle. It was flanked by three fighters, but Keith wasn’t watching them at all, really. He was watching the great big transport look for a great big open space to land in.

The unfortunate fact was, he knew there was a really good one nearby.

“Hey, Pidge,” he said, keeping his tone conversational, “where did we leave the green lion?”

She pointed without looking up from her work. “That way...why?”

“No reason,” he said. “It just sort of looks like the Galra are about to land a transport on it.”

Pidge blinked up at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, voice flat. A flare of emerald light pushed in through the window as the green lion threw its shield up at the last second, flickering back into view as the transport slid awkwardly off the shield, fired its landing jets in precisely the wrong way, and crumpled one of its wings as it flipped upside down.

“Well, that happened,” Keith said calmly.

A dust cloud rose from the impact site. The Galra prisoner escorts that had poured out of the fighters stared at the Voltron lion parked only a few feet away. One of them backed towards his ship without looking away, ran into another Galra, almost tripped on the landing ramp, and finally disappeared inside - probably to make a call.

The rest turned as a group towards the building.

“Aaaaand it’s time to go. Pidge -”

Pidge let out a snarl of frustration and popped to her feet, ready to run, but she didn’t, yet - just stood there and scrolled faster. “It’s here, it has to be here, what moronic underqualified jumped-up illiterate scrooge of a secretary organized this file system! I’m going to scream.”

“Can’t you just take the whole thing with you?”

“Oh yeah, I’ll just take this entire bank of hard drives out of this room-sized computer and stuff them down the neck of my flight suit. One job, Keith!”

He sighed, but that was basically the reaction he’d been expecting. His brain switched gears, falling back on maneuvers, on strategy. They could hold this room for a while, but it would also mean letting themselves get cornered, and eventually, the Galra would get in. They couldn’t stay. But if Pidge wouldn’t leave…

He peeked through the window again. He’d counted them already: three in each ship, for a total of nine, if none came from the transport. Eight, if the one in the ship stayed put, but he couldn’t assume that to be true. Eleven, if Pidge was right about the three others already in the facility.

Eleven Galra soldiers in a hallway chokepoint. If he had Lance’s rifle, they might have a shot.

Maybe it was time to call the castle for backup.

He keyed the line. As the signal travelled, he felt the Galra closing in, felt their time running short. It was, curiously, almost a physical sensation, a rumbling that he felt through his shoes, as of many feet in a thundering charge -

Or of four.

A jolt of understanding shot through him, and he launched himself back to the window -

Outside, the Ka’alia was bearing down on the line of advancing Galra. It threw its great, antlered head back, letting out a bugling cry that vibrated straight through to his bones, even in here. And then it lowered its head and plowed into the Galra.

Its antlers - what remained of them - deflected a few stray shots, but the shock of the attack had scattered the Galra’s focus. The Ka’alia threw its head sideways in a violent sweep that obliterated the Galra next to it, and then reared and stomped another underfoot.

The comm line to the castle connected. Allura’s voice was in his ear, and in Pidge’s, he guessed, because her head came up from her work for just a moment.

“ _Keith! Is everything alright? We’re standing by to warp help to you_.”

Outside, the Ka’alia turned its massive head towards the remaining Galra. A blaster shot sizzled into its shoulder, and the Ka’alia didn’t even flinch. It just lowered its head and advanced, snorting, pawing the ground. The Asperion clung grimly to its neck.

“No, uh, we’re good,” said Keith. “Everything’s good. Just checking in. How are you?”

“Smooth,” said Pidge, and Keith made a rude gesture at her that she didn’t see, but still returned.

“ _If you say so_ ,” said Allura, a little suspiciously. “ _When can we expect you back_?”

“As soon as Pidge figures out what she’s doing,” he said, and hung up before Pidge’s indignant squawk could make it through.

The Ka’alia had bought them time, but more Galra would be coming - and this time, with a Voltron lion here, they’d come in force. They _really_ had to leave.

“Pidge -”

“I know, I know!”

“Pidge.”

“I’m almost -”

“Pidge!”

“No, I’m - HA!” She tapped a few keys, rapid-fire, then hopped in triumph, yanking wires. “Okay okay okay let’s go!”

Keith checked the window. “Our rendevous has changed. We can head straight out.”

“What? Why - oh.” She was looking out at the Ka’alia, which was busy stomping its great hooves into the underbelly of the transport ship. Between the Paladins and the Ka’alia lay a sparking wasteland of crunched-up Galra. “I like these guys,” she said.

“Sure, but I’m not telling anyone back at the castle that we got rescued by a giant deer and the sloth that rides it.”

She gave him a crooked squint that might have been a bad attempt at a wink. “Were we in need of rescuing? Were you not doing your one job?”

In reply, Keith punched her in the shoulder, but lightly, and she laughed as they made their way outside.

The Ka’alia came to meet them, nostrils blown wide, and Pidge relayed what she’d found: a system, a planet, a facility, a storage unit. It was one step less than GPS coordinates, and more than the aliens had been expecting to find.

“This information-no is a valuable gift-no,” said the Ka’alia, solemn. The Asperion stretched out one long arm towards them, and Pidge hesitantly stepped forward. The Asperion rested its hand on her head.

“Remember,” it said.

“We declare you Voltron-no,” said the Ka’alia. “Our people will speak-no your name, and know you as friend-no and hero-no.”

“This is so cool,” Pidge whispered.

“You know Voltron isn’t our names, right?” said Keith, and Pidge reached out and gently facepalmed him.

“Don’t ruin this for me,” she said in the same reverent tone as before. Keith pushed her hand off his face and held his peace.

The Asperion withdrew its hand and tucked it back against its body. The Ka’alia bowed its head briefly, and turned to go.

“Good luck,” said Pidge. “With finding your artifact, I mean.”

“And to you,” said the Ka’alia, without stopping, “with finding what you seek.”

Keith and Pidge stood side by side and watched the pair of aliens retreat. The Ka’alia’s bulk navigated around the ruins of the Galra ships, then down, towards the valley.

“That was weird, right?” said Keith.

“Yep,” said Pidge, and then, “Wait, what part?”

“The giant deer and the monkey it carries around for hands.”

“Oh. Yep.”

“Got what we came for, though?”

“Also yep.”

Keith nodded, satisfied. The Ka’alia had disappeared from view - back to whatever ship they’d arrived in, Keith supposed. He hoped they’d have an easier time acquiring their artifact than they had with finding out where it was.

Green’s shield flickered down, expectant, and Keith put the aliens out of his mind. It was time - to go back to the castle, to go back to their team. To return to being Voltron, to saving the galaxy. Time to go.

They climbed back into Green, went back into stealth. As they left the planet’s atmosphere, they passed invisibly by a small fleet of Galra ships, here on the hunt for Voltron, and about to be bitterly disappointed.

 

* * *

 

In the end, they returned to the castle without a scratch on them.

Coran greeted them in the hangar, ready to take care of bumps and bruises, but both Paladins waved him off. “Uneventful trip, then?” he said.

Pidge and Keith exchanged a glance. “Utterly,” Pidge said.

“Boring, actually,” said Keith.

Coran clapped his hands together. “Glad to hear it!” He turned and they followed him in the direction of the bridge. “Your fellow Paladins are waiting for you to check in, and Allura as well. From what I understand, they’re getting ready to head off on their own mission.”

“Figures,” said Pidge. “Lance hates sitting still.”

Coran shrugged in agreement. “So, tell me what you’ve brought back for us.”

Keith let himself be swept under by their conversation about code modifications and linear adjusters as Pidge launched directly into the technical stuff and Coran started asking excited questions. He found himself relaxing - present, but not called upon to participate, just being in their company - and that feeling carried him all the way through to their arrival on the bridge.

When the doors whooshed open, Shiro was leaning a hip against a workstation, helmet tucked under his arm, and he was looking on fondly as Hunk held something out of Lance’s reach and Lance scrabbled to grab it.

Allura looked over with relief. “Oh, good, you’re back. I trust everything went well?”

Pidge handed over her data chip. “Yeah, check it out. Can you put this up on - yeah. Thanks.” On the main screen, a string of code started unspooling in front of them. “It’ll help us sneak around, if I can modify it a bit. The castle’s stealth tech is sadly outdated compared to the Galra’s, and this will help keep us off their scanners.”

“I recognize this,” Allura said, peering intently at the code. “Coran and my father wrote this, but it was never implemented. It’s...bigger, now. It’s grown.”

“That’s the best part. The Galra took it and worked on it, but then it got sidelined and shoved into storage and forgotten about. They don’t have any experience with it.”

Shiro chimed in. “Actually, we realized something that will help us in the long run, too. Hunk, show them.”

Hunk obligingly held up what he’d been keeping away from Lance: it was an oblong blue crystal, glimmering with light. There was a savage crack rupturing the heart of it. Lance eyed it keenly.

“Castle’s been under a lot of strain, and these need replacing,” Shiro said. “We have to make sure we’re in good shape before the Galra come after us again.”

“Or before we go after them,” said Keith. “So we need crystals. Where do we find them?”

“Oh, we found them,” said Hunk. “Now all we have to do is go get them.”

“When do we leave?”

Shiro pushed to his feet. “ _You_ don’t. Lance and Hunk and I can handle this. It’s your turn to protect the castle.”

“Works for me,” said Pidge. “I need to start going through the data we got from Sendak, anyway.”

Keith reached for an argument, but was distracted by a quiet snort of laughter. Hunk had surrendered the crystal to Lance’s prying hands, and he was using it like a monocle, or a magnifying glass. He seemed to be inspecting Hunk’s nose, and Hunk was rolling his eyes.

They were a team. He would have to trust them to come back safely. “Okay,” he said, “but we’ll be on standby. Call us if you run into trouble.”

“We will,” said Shiro, dropping a hand on Keith’s shoulder as he passed. “We’ll be back before you know it.”

There was a word floating at the edge of Keith’s worry, a word he refused to acknowledge. But he still saw the shape of it, still felt the sharpness of its edges. Shiro had flown away on a mission without him before. And Shiro hadn’t come back for almost two years.

This would be different. It had to be different.

So he just nodded, watched the three of them go. As the lions launched, Pidge went to strip off her armour, Coran went who-knows-where, Allura settled in on the bridge to monitor their progress, and Keith went, as usual, to the training floor.

He should rest, probably, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to. This would keep him busy until they came back.

After the malfunction, Allura had locked the simulator into the first level of difficulty only. It was too easy for Keith, now, but he had to get over the memory of almost dying here. Of Lance almost dying not so far away. Of their home turning on them, if only briefly.

So he brought up the simulation, letting his thoughts drift to the Balmerans, to the Alteans, to the Ka’alia’s antlers. To Pidge, dropping all of her careful plans to let him off the chain when he needed it. To the image of Sendak being ejected into space.

Pidge would find something useful in all that garbage in Sendak’s memories, he knew it. And they’d use it to burn a hole in the Galra’s stranglehold on the universe.

For now, he ran the sim. Pummeled it, annihilated it, until the bayard grew heavy in his hand, until his shoulders ached under the armour. Ran it again.

Pidge would find something. Whatever it was, Keith would be ready.

Somewhere out there, the Voltron lions flew, dangerous and determined. After ten thousand years of sleeping, they were working to protect each other, and everyone they could. To rescue, to save. To take up the mantle their previous Paladins had set down, so long ago.

Somewhere out there, the Voltron lions were defending the universe once more.

And oh, were they ever going to make it worth the wait.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this fic, stay tuned to the [voltron season two countdown](http://voltrons2countdown.tumblr.com/) for Interesting Developments over the next three days!
> 
> OR just hit up the [NEXT PART](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9369254) directly!


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